Climate change challenge – the next crucial step….

The Big Question : From Mexico, to South Africa – ‘Can humanity afford NOT to take a leap of faith?’

From China Daily today

Cancun progress on second commitment period and global emission cuts should be furthered at Durban

Climate change is one of the issues of crucial importance to the interests of human beings and the national development of every country. It requires the collaborative efforts of all countries.

Thanks to the joint efforts of all parties, the Cancun Agreements were adopted at Cancun, Mexico, in December last year. They are of significant importance to furthering mutual understanding and advancing the negotiating process.

China’s contribution to the Cancun Conference

The Copenhagen Conference in 2009 caused a certain amount of skepticism among parties about the effectiveness of the multilateral mechanism under the United Nations framework. Under such circumstances, along with other developing countries, China strongly supported the multilateral negotiation mechanism of the United Nations by pressing for more ad hoc working group meetings in 2010, in order to achieve concrete progress and practical results in Cancun, as well as guaranteeing the negotiations got back on track.

In the meantime, by exchanging opinions with all parties on important issues at the Cancun Conference, China enhanced mutual understanding with all parties, so as to overcome divergences and boost mutual trust. China reinforced coordination and cooperation among developing countries through BASIC and the “Group of 77 and China“, and had constructive dialogues with developed countries to enhance mutual confidence. This paved the way for success in Cancun.

In communications with the Mexican Presidency of COP-16/CMP6, China put forward constructive proposals and extended its full support. China hosted the last climate change conference before the Cancun Conference in Tianjin last October. The Tianjin Conference succeeded in building a solid foundation for a successful Cancun Conference by creating a consensus “seeking a set of balanced outcomes from elements within and between the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change and the Kyoto Protocol“.

China also carried out a series of practical actions to accomplish the targets of energy-saving and emission reductions set up for the 11th Five-Year Plan (2006-2010). During this period, China reduced its energy consumption per unit of GDP by 19.06 percent on the 2005 levels, which is equivalent to reducing 1.5 billion tons of CO2 emissions. The 12th Five-Year Plan (2011-2015) attaches even more strategic importance to the work of addressing climate change and green low-carbon development. The international community has recognized China’s efforts in tackling climate change, which has bolstered the confidence of all parties in their future cooperation to combat climate change.

During the Cancun Conference, the Chinese delegation was fully engaged in the negotiations, adhering to the principle of common but differentiated responsibilities and endeavored to ensure openness, transparency and inclusiveness. On important issues, such as long-term global goals, the second commitment period of the Kyoto Protocol, international consultation and analysis of mitigation actions by developing countries, as well as emission reduction commitments by developed countries, China, with its flexibility, communicated with all parties to formulate a plan that could be accepted by all and that protects the interests of developing countries.

The Government of Mexico and Mexican President Felipe Calderon have publicly appreciated China’s support and contribution to the Cancun Conference many times, and this has been echoed by the wider international community.

International negotiations on climate change: an arduous task

The COP17/CMP7 will be held in Durban, South Africa, at the end of this year. No doubt the talks will be arduous, but participants should seek to translate the challenges into opportunities in order to preserve the current achievements and reach a new consensus.

The Durban Conference should strictly follow the mandate of the Bali Road Map, carry out the Cancun Agreements, and enhance implementation of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change and its Kyoto Protocol to achieve a comprehensive and balanced outcome by accomplishing the following four major tasks:

First, the Durban Conference should determine deeper quantified emission reduction targets for developed countries in the second commitment period of the Kyoto Protocol.

The Kyoto Protocol is one of two negotiating tracks, its first commitment period ends in 2012. The Cancun Agreements require that there is no gap between the first and the second commitment periods of the Kyoto Protocol, thus, the Durban Conference should fix the targets as soon as possible. This is the most urgent task of the Durban Conference.

The Kyoto Protocol is an integral part of the legal framework for the international community to address climate change. Having a second commitment period of the Kyoto Protocol is a firm demand by developing countries and is a continuation of the existing legal framework and political trust among and between developed and developing countries.

In the meantime, based on the Cancun Agreements, developed countries should raise the level of their emission reduction commitments. Only if developed countries conduct ambitious mid-term emission reductions, can the possibility of limiting global warming to a 2 degrees Celsius rise in global temperature be realized. Moreover, only if the emission reduction targets of developed countries in the second commitment period of the Kyoto Protocol be determined, can the emission reduction targets of developed countries that are not parties to the Kyoto Protocol be compared.

Second, the Durban Conference shall also determine the emission reduction targets of developed countries that are not parties to the Kyoto Protocol comparable with the commitments of other developed countries, and the autonomous mitigation actions of developing countries.

In accordance with the mandate of the Bali Road Map, developed countries that are parties to the Kyoto Protocol shall undertake emission reduction targets under the Kyoto Protocol, while developed countries that are not parties to the Kyoto Protocol shall undertake comparable emission reduction targets under the Convention. The comparability of emission reduction efforts shall include comparability in nature, magnitude and compliance.

Developing countries should, in the context of sustainable development, actively carry out mitigation actions with the financial and technological support from developed countries. Many developing countries have set up targets for their autonomous emission reduction actions. As long as developed countries carry out international legally binding emission reduction targets by 2020, in accordance with the principle of common but differentiated responsibility, we can, in a proper legal form, define the mitigation actions of developing countries and recognize their efforts to reduce emissions.

Third, we should implement the relevant financial and technology transfer arrangements.

Most developing countries have taken active actions to address climate change. However, the developed countries are lagging far behind in providing effective financial and technological support to developing countries. Only by establishing effective mechanisms, and providing adequate financial and technological support, can developing countries effectively implement mitigation actions, and make a positive contribution to holding the increase in global temperature below 2 degrees Celsius as a long-term global goal.

Fourth, we need to further elaborate on the MRV (measurable, reportable and verifiable) and transparency related issues that were included in the Cancun Agreements.

The Cancun Agreements have clearly defined the principles for MRV and transparency. At the upcoming Durban Conference, China will support detailed arrangements for the MRVs of emission reduction commitments for developed countries, as well as financial and technology support to developing countries from developed countries. Such arrangements shall fully reflect the principle of common but differentiated responsibilities between developing and developed countries.

The international negotiations on climate change are a long-term and arduous task. The Cancun Conference showed that the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change and the Kyoto Protocol, as a United Nations multilateral process, are still full of vigor and play an irreplaceable role after 20 years of negotiations. So long as each of our countries takes the interests of human beings as the priority, shows its spirit in cooperation and compromise and unswervingly adheres to the basic framework and principles of the Convention and its Kyoto Protocol, we can further the process of international cooperation on climate change.

China has been, is, and will always be, a constructive force advancing international negotiations on climate change. China will work with all parties to make active efforts to achieve a positive outcome at the Durban Conference.

The author is vice-minister of the National Development and Reform Commission.

http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/cndy/2011-03/03/content_12106233.htm

Conference of Parties

http://www.cop17durban.com/Pages/default.aspx

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Climate Talks End With Modest Deal on Emissions

From the International Herald Tribune  

CANCÚN, Mexico — The United Nations climate change conference began with modest aims and ended early Saturday with modest achievements. But while the measures adopted here may have scant near-term impact on the warming of the planet, the international process for dealing with the issue got a significant vote of confidence.

The agreement fell well short of the broad changes scientists say are needed to avoid dangerous climate change in coming decades. But it lays the groundwork for stronger measures in the future, if nations are able to overcome the emotional arguments that have crippled climate change negotiations in recent years.

The package known as the Cancún Agreements gives the more than 190 countries participating in the conference another year to decide whether to extend the frayed Kyoto Protocol, the 1997 agreement that requires most wealthy nations to trim their emissions while providing assistance to developing countries to pursue a cleaner energy future.

The agreement is not a legally binding treaty, but the success of these talks allows the process to seek a more robust accord at next year’s climate conference in Durban, South Africa.

“This is not the end, but it is a new beginning,” said Christiana Figueres, the Costa Rican diplomat who serves as executive secretary of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. “It is not what is ultimately required, but it is the essential foundation on which to build greater, collective ambition.”

The agreement sets up a new fund to help poor countries adapt to climate changes, creates new mechanisms for transfer of clean energy technology, provides compensation for the preservation of tropical forests and strengthens the emissions reductions pledges that came out of the last United Nations climate change meeting in Copenhagen last year.

The conference approved the package over the objections of Bolivia, which condemned the pact as too weak. Bolivia’s chief climate negotiator, Pablo Solón, said that the emissions reductions laid out in the plan would allow global temperatures to rise as much as 4 degrees Celsius over the next half century, twice the stated goal of the agreement and a level that would doom millions in the poorest and most vulnerable nations.

But his protests did not block acceptance of the package. Delegates from island states and the least-developed countries warmly welcomed the pact because it would start the flow of billions of dollars to assist them to adopt cleaner energy systems and adapt to inevitable changes in the climate, like sea rise and drought.

But it left unresolved where the $100 billion in annual climate-related aid that the wealthy nations have promised to provide would come from.

Todd Stern, the American climate envoy, said the package achieved much of what he had hoped, including a more solid commitment by all nations to take steps to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions and a more formalized international program of reporting and verification of reductions. It adds needed specifics to the fuzzy promises of last year’s Copenhagen Accord, he said.

“This is a significant step forward that builds on the progress made in Copenhagen,” he said in a news conference after the package was adopted. “It successfully anchors mitigation pledges of the Copenhagen Accord and builds on the transparency element of the accord with substantial detail and content.”

Mr. Stern had been particularly insistent that the agreement include a consistent formula for countries to disclose their emissions, report on the measures they are taking to reduce them and provide detailed statements of economic assumptions and methodology. Although a number of large developing nations like China, Brazil and South Africa balked at the intrusiveness of the system, Mr. Stern helped devise a compromise they could live with.

Yvo de Boer, who stepped down this year after four years as executive secretary of the United Nations climate office, said that the success of this year’s conference was in large measure attributable to the modesty of its goals.

“This process has never been characterized by leaps and bounds,” he said in an interview. “It has been characterized by small steps. And I’d rather see this small step here in Cancún than the international community tripping over itself in an effort to make a large leap.”

In all, the success of the Cancún talks was a shot in the arm for a process that some had likened to a zombie, stumbling aimlessly but refusing to die.

“None of this, of course, is world changing,” said Michael A. Levi, who follows climate issues at the Council on Foreign Relations in New York. “The Cancún agreement should be applauded not because it solves everything, but because it chooses not to: it focuses on those areas where the U.N. process has the most potential to be useful, and avoids other areas where the U.N. process is a dead end. The outcome does not change the fact that most of the important work of cutting emissions will be driven outside the U.N. process.”

John Collins Rudolf contributed reporting from New York.

 http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/12/science/earth/12climate.html

Cancun climate conference deal – hopefully some good news for the planet

More than 190 countries have struck an agreement at the latest round of UN climate talks putting efforts to secure a new international deal to tackle global warming back on track. Skip related content Related photos / videos Cancun climate deal struck Enlarge photo .Related content Radioactive cobalt vanishes from Polish factory Hammer protest at UN climate talks Lib Dems urge delay on student fees vote Related Hot Topic: Environment Have your say: Environment The talks in Cancun, Mexico, are the latest attempt to make progress towards a new global deal on tackling climate change, after last year’s meeting in Copenhagen failed amid chaotic scenes, to secure a new legally-binding treaty on cutting emissions, instead delivering only a weak voluntary accord. At the end of two weeks of talks in Mexico, government ministers and officials agreed a deal which Climate Change Secretary Chris Huhne described as a “serious package” of measures. He acknowledged the agreement did not give everybody everything they wanted and would still require work towards a final deal at a meeting next year in Durban, South Africa. Environmental campaigners said it threw a lifeline to efforts to get a deal to tackle climate change but there was still much work to do, in particular to close the “gigatonne gap” between the greenhouse emissions cuts countries have pledged and the reductions needed to limit temperature rises to no more than 2C. Friends of the Earth’s international climate campaigner Asad Rehman described the Cancun agreement as weak and ineffective – but said it gave the world a “small and fragile lifeline”. And he warned: “”The emissions cuts on the table could still lead to a global temperature increase of up to five degrees which would be catastrophic for hundreds of millions of the world’s poorest people.” The agreement acknowledges the need to keep temperature rises to 2C and brings non-binding emissions cuts pledges made under the voluntary Copenhagen Accord, hammered out in the dying hours of last year’s conference, into the UN process. Representatives from country after country acknowledged the agreement was not perfect, but that they supported it as progress towards a final deal – although Bolivia hit out at the proposals, likening them to genocide.

http://uk.news.yahoo.com/4/20101211/twl-cancun-climate-deal-struck-41f21e0.html

Climate talks on knife edge over Chinese demands

Developing nations accuse West of intransigence, as corruption is cited as obstacle to progress

Amid growing anger at the lack of political action, several thousand people marched to Parliament in London yesterday to demand that Britain become “zero carbon” by 2030.

Environment ministers from around the world flew in to Mexico yesterday for the final days of the climate-change talks in Cancun, which threatened to fracture over Chinese-led demands for concessions from the West. Campaigners marched in London yesterday to demand action. As a sign of the work still to be done, only 170 words out of 1,300 on two pages of a key text were undisputed on the “shared vision” of what delegates hoped to accomplish.However, a further issue is now being cited as a significant obstacle in the fight against climate change – corruption. The extent of the problem could see any agreements doomed to failure, according to leading global risks analysts. New research to be released this week shows that among the countries most at risk from climate change are also to be found those that are most corrupt – making it difficult to counter the effects of flooding, desertification and deforestation.”Our mapping research shows that the countries which are most vulnerable to the impacts of climate change are often those that are the most corrupt,” said Professor Alyson Warhurst, chief executive of global risk analysts Maplecroft, which will release its Business Integrity and Corruption Index this Thursday. She warned that endemic corruption “results in money being diverted away from critical infrastructure projects and towards personal gain of individuals”, adding that schemes to combat climate change are at particular risk of being compromised.Generally, bribery is more prevalent in developing economies with weak legal systems and low pay scales, meaning both that there is a greater temptation to engage in corruption and it is easier to do so with impunity. Of the world’s leading emerging markets of Brazil, Russia, India and China, Russia is cited as the most corrupt due to the “systemic nature of corruption in the country and its prevalence throughout all tiers of government”. India is categorised as an “extreme risk” country, while China and Brazil are labelled as being at “high risk” of corruption. Mexico, Saudi Arabia and South Africa are among the other countries that fall into this category. Bangladesh, Nigeria and Pakistan are among those deemed at “extreme risk”.The findings come as the outcome of the Cancun negotiations, which end this Friday, are “in the balance”, according to Todd Stern, head of the US delegation. And the mood among delegates will not have been lifted by the news yesterday that the talks had been dismissed as doomed to failure by the European Council President, Herman Van Rompuy, according to a leaked US embassy cable. The document, recording a discussion last December between Mr Van Rompuy and the US ambassador to Belgium, claimed the EC President said he had “given up” on the negotiations.The chances of any deals being struck this week are remote, with a continuing row over the future of the Kyoto protocol, which expires in 2012. In essence, representatives of developing countries want it to be extended, while rich countries do not. Existing tensions were exacerbated on Friday by China’s accusation that Western countries were trying to “kill off” the protocol signed 13 years ago, which obliges only developed nations to cut greenhouse gas emissions.Amid growing anger at the lack of political action, several thousand people marched to Parliament in London yesterday to demand that Britain become “zero carbon” by 2030.

http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/climate-change/climate-talks-on-knife-edge-over-chinese-demands-2151710.html

http://cc2010.mx/en/

#Cancún climate talks: In search of the holy grail of #climate change policy

At Cancun, we have an opportunity to make the change – in strategy and our way forward.  

Although Copenhagen fell short of delivering a legally binding global treaty, Cancún is another step towards that ultimate goal

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/cif-green/2010/nov/29/cancun-climate-change-copenhagen

Climate change mission: clean up the mess after #Copenhagen

 

The conference which begins in Cancun today must restart the battle to lower emissions, says Michael McCarthy

From Editorial of The Independent

Snowfalls grip swathes of Britain. Temperatures in Wales dip to minus-17. As Britain shivers in the kind of freezing winter that we normally associate with Eastern Europe, it’s hard to remember that the world is at the tail end of the hottest, or second hottest, year on record. That is the problem with global warming. The steady rise in temperatures is incremental and often almost undetectable, especially in the cold northern hemisphere, where some feel tempted to celebrate the prospect of more Mediterranean-style summers.  Unfortunately, the price that the rest of the world stands to pay for more agreeable northern summers is catastrophic in terms of rising sea levels, drought and desertification, which is why progress on curbing greenhouse gas emissions at this week’s climate conference in Cancun, Mexico, is vital.

http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/leading-articles/leading-article-let-us-not-doom-cancun-to-failure-before-it-even-begins-2146245.html

The article in full  

Officials and ministers from nearly 200 countries meet in Mexico today to attempt one of history’s greatest repair jobs: the mending of the world’s project to cope with climate change, which was comprehensively wrecked in Copenhagen a year ago. For the delegates gathering in the Caribbean “super-resort” of Cancun, it will not be possible to achieve the aim of the failed conference in the Danish capital, which was a new, legally binding treaty involving all countries, to slash the emissions of the greenhouse gases which are causing global warming. But what they may be able to do is “put the wheels back on the wagon” and restore momentum to the climate change negotiating process – which after the Copenhagen meeting seemed to have been smashed to pieces – in the hope of achieving a legal treaty at a future United Nations climate conference, perhaps even the next one, which is scheduled for Durban, South Africa, in a year’s time. They badly need to, because although climate change may have fallen out of the headlines and slipped down the political agenda in recent months, not least because of international financial turmoil, the threat of rising world temperatures has continued to mount. Last week, the Met Office in London released a report which asserted that evidence of global warming was stronger than ever, and later this week the World Meteorological Organisation is expected to announce that 2010 has been either the hottest or the second-hottest year ever recorded. Today, another group of British scientists claims that if the warming is not checked, children born today may live to see a world on average 4C hotter, which is unprecedented in human history.

It remains no less a critical issue, then, on the table at Cancun. The two-week meeting it is about to host will be seen, and even defined, in terms of the failure at Copenhagen last December. That was the most traumatic event in the two decades of international talks which have gone on since the global warming issue burst on to the scene in the late 1980s, not least for the enormous weight of expectation which had built up behind it. “Hopenhagen”, the young climate campaigners were calling it beforehand. Never have hopes been so dashed.The disenchantment was the greater for the fact that the 194 countries involved in the talks all accepted that if radical cuts in greenhouse gas emissions were not made, average temperatures might rise by up to 6C by the end of the century. The threshold for dangerous climate change is generally thought to be a rise of about 2C. The UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) calculated that to be on a path to halt the warming, global emissions of carbon dioxide (CO2) had to be cut by between 25 and 40 per cent by 2020. A new, legally binding agreement to achieve this was Copenhagen’s central aim. But such a deal would have to go much further than the existing climate treaty, the Kyoto Protocol, which did not include the world’s two biggest emitters of CO2 – the US and China. George Bush had withdrawn America from Kyoto shortly after taking office in 2001; and under the terms of the protocol, China, along with all other developing countries, was not obliged to make actual emissions cuts. (Only the rich developed nations were so bound). Yet the US and China were each annually emitting about seven billion tonnes of CO2, making up nearly a third of the global total. The project to construct a new, all-embracing legal climate treaty that would incorporate them fell apart principally because of dissension about the form of the new agreement. The developing countries, led by China and India, were strongly attached to Kyoto, and wanted a renewal of its commitments (which run out at the end of 2012), because Kyoto made sure the rich countries were doing something, while they – the developing nations – did not have to do anything. Perhaps not unreasonably, they take the view that the rich world put most of the CO2 up there, and should take the lead in dealing with it. The developed countries, on the other hand, strongly led by Britain and the other EU states and backed by the US – which under the leadership of President Barack Obama was prepared to re-engage with the process and had set itself an emissions target for the first time – wanted to tear up Kyoto and replace it with a new deal, to set legally binding targets on the developing world alongside those on the rich nations. The gap between these two strongly divergent positions proved unbridgeable and the negotiations foundered. As more than 100 world leaders arrived for what was intended to be the triumphant final agreement, they faced the nightmarish prospect of there being nothing to agree on. The situation, and their faces, were saved by a last-minute, patched-up deal for which the main architect, it is entirely fair to say, was the former British prime minister, Gordon Brown, and for which the credit was taken by Mr Obama. This was the so-called “Copenhagen Accord” – a three-page, 12-clause statement of intent, legally binding on no one, saying in effect that climate change is a Jolly Bad Thing and promising that We’re Jolly Well Going To Work Together To Stop It. On one level – in terms of the legally binding agreement which is needed – it is meaningless. But over the past year, the Copenhagen Accord has proved to have virtues, not least because all countries were invited to submit plans (entirely voluntary ones) for how they might cut emissions, to be inserted into an Appendix of the Accord, and 80 of them have now done so, including the leading carbon emitters, China, the US and India.Some of the targets (China’s and India’s for example) are for reducing the energy intensity of their economies rather than for actual emissions cuts, and the US target, to cut emissions by 17 per cent on 2005 levels, was dependent on the Senate passing legislation which is not, for now, going to happen.Nevertheless, it was unthinkable even two years ago that the US, China and India, along with other major emerging economies such as Brazil, Indonesia, Mexico and South Africa, would have set out specific pledges to reduce their carbon emissions, yet all have done so, and this is a major step forward – as long as the pledges are carried out. An analysis published last week by the UN Environment Programme calculated that, if implemented in full, they might go 60 per cent of the way towards the emission cuts needed by 2020.This is where Cancun begins. There is no possibility of the 16th conference of the parties of the UN Climate Convention – COP-16, in the jargon – agreeing a new, legally binding climate treaty. The subject is not even on the agenda. So what can it do? The first thing is that it can regularise the Copenhagen Accord and the pledges it contains. The accord is not a decision of the COP, which is what is needed to give it legal status; it is at present merely a document which the conference of the parties has “noted”. More than that, the pledges, which were put forward from the end of January onwards, have not been formally acknowledged by the UN Climate Convention in any way at all, other than by being listed on its website. They need to be brought into the convention legally so they can be regularised and possibly improved. British officials are working towards this.Second, Cancun can make real progress on a number of climate side-issues, of which the most prominent are finance and forestry. The meeting can agree on the structure of a new fund to control the huge sums of money which were promised at Copenhagen, in its main positive outcome, to help developing countries cope with a warming world – $30bn (£19.2bn) by 2012 and $100bn annually by 2020. Third and finally, it can – it must – start out once more on the road to that treaty, and the object of cutting world emissions by 25 to 40 per cent by 2020.For its part, the British Government (along with the rest of the EU) now accepts that the attachment of developing countries to the Kyoto Protocol is very strong. It will contemplate a double deal, with a renewed Kyoto running alongside a new agreement which sets climate targets for developing as well as developed countries.But there is a price. Any new agreement, as far as the UK is concerned, has to be legally binding on the signatories. Countries might set their own targets, but once set, to avoid cheating they must have a legal obligation to meet them.This, potentially, is the crucial stumbling block on the road ahead. The Chinese made it crystal clear at Copenhagen that they were absolutely unwilling to be legally bound with regard to their future emissions.As for the US, Mr Obama’s pledge to cut emissions by 17 per cent last year was predicated on the US Congress agreeing it. Since the triumph of the Republicans in the midterm elections, that agreement and that legislation are dead in the water.The climate project ran into the ground in snowy Copenhagen. Now there is a chance to resurrect it in sunny Cancun. But nobody is saying it will be easy; the road ahead will be long and hard.Climate change: the paperwork* The United Nations Framework Convention on Climate ChangeThe basic international mechanism under which the fight against climate change is carried on. Signed in June 1992, the convention now covers virtually every country, including the US (which has withdrawn from Kyoto).  * The Kyoto ProtocolSigned in Japan in December 1997, this treaty commits countries to making legally binding cuts in their emissions. So far, only the rich nations have targets. The US was part of this group until George Bush withdrew in 2001. Kyoto’s targets do not go far enough to slow down warming, and it does not set targets for developing countries. * The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change A UN body which reviews the science of global warming. There have been four assessment reports so far. The last, published in January 2007, warned that if emissions were not drastically cut, world average temperatures could rise by up to a devastating 6.4C by 2100.  * The Copenhagen AccordThe outcome of the 2009 UN meeting (COP-15), at which it was hoped that a new treaty would be signed to make much more drastic cuts in emissions. It fell apart because the industrialised nations wanted a new treaty binding all states; the developing countries wanted to renew Kyoto. The patched-up accord instead consisted of pledges with no official status whatsoever. * Cancun – COP-16The Cancun meeting will try to pick up the pieces of the wreckage of last year; one of its tasks will be to try to make the pledges of the Copenhagen Accord an official part of the convention.WHAT AN AVERAGE TEMPERATURE RISE O F 4 °C WOULD REALLY MEAN FOR THE PLANETOVERVIEWThe average rise will not be spread uniformly, and temperatures over land will be significantly higher (5.5C on average) than over the ocean, as the land heats up more quickly than the sea.THE ARCTICTemperatures at higher latitudes, particularly in the Arctic, will rise much more steeply in a four-degree world as they experience climate feedbacks due to the loss of sea ice and snow cover.Already, scientists have detected signs of unusual permafrost melting in Siberia and the release of vast quantities of underground methane, a powerful greenhouse gas.SOUTHERN EUROPEThe summer of 2003, when night-time temperatures were far beyond normal, caused many thousands of deaths through heat stroke and other related conditions. A four-degree world will make such summerscommonplace, causing environmental as well as medical problems.INDIAN SUB-CONTINENTA growing population puts pressure on water supplies, which will be exacerbated in regions of the world that will experience the greatest increase in numbers of people, such as India. In a four-degree world, however, the problems of water shortages will be primarily caused by climate change – a double whammy for the most populated countries.AMAZONAt higher temperatures, the Amazon rainforest is vulnerable to drought and uncontrolled spread of fires. Some climate models predict increased rainfall, while other “more realistic” computer projections predict severe drying in the Amazon. SOUTH-EAST ASIASea level rise is inevitable in a warmer world, but the problem will be significantly worse in a four-degree world because of melting ice sheets, glaciers and thermal expansion. Low-lying, heavily populated river deltas and coastal regions are especially vulnerable to flooding. Small oceanic islands will experience increased storm surges and problems with increased soil salinity.SUB-SAHARAN AFRICAAt 4°C, virtually all cereal-growing regions of the world experience crop failures or shortages. The areas affected most will be semi-arid regions where agriculture is already difficult, such as parts of sub-Saharan Africa. Some regions may become uninhabitable with widespread famine

http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/climate-change/200-nations-one-mission-to-repair-the-mess-left-by-copenhagen-2146235.html

Environmental sustainability is out the window…(!!?)… if Commission is cut

The Government is expected to axe its environmental watchdog this week as part of Whitehall budget cuts. If the Sustainable Development Commission is to be cut, it is a blow on a nunber of fronts -logic, the environment, sustainable government, indeed the concept of sustainability – are all losers!

Shadow energy and climate change secretary Ed Miliband: “They promised to be the greenest government ever but they’re completely betraying that promise.”

Friends of the Earth’s executive director Andy Atkins said: “The Sustainable Development Commission has played a crucial role in helping Government departments work together to tackle the triple threats of climate change, economic downturn and inequality – as well as keeping a critical check on progress.

Jonathon Porritt: As the former Chair of the Sustainable Development Commission from 2000-2009, I’m clearly going to be a bit biased about the Government’s decision yesterday to get rid of the Commission.

http://www.24dash.com/blogs/jonathon_porritt/2010/07/23/The-Governments-First-Green-Betrayal/

The Government is expected to axe its environmental watchdog this week as part of Whitehall budget cuts.

An announcement that the Sustainable Development Commission is to be abolished is expected tomorrow, just as the environmental and sustainability watchdog publishes its latest report outlining the savings departments could make from being greener.

The report will detail how the Government could make hundreds of millions of pounds of savings over the next Parliament by reducing transport, water use, energy waste and rubbish – savings worth many times the £3 million expenditure on the SDC.

The Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs was unable to confirm today if the arms-length body, which is jointly operated by the UK Government and devolved administrations, is to be disbanded, saying no final decision has been made.

But reports of its imminent demise have raised concerns in the Welsh Assembly, where it was last week described as playing an important role in Wales’s efforts to become greener.

The SDC has helped central government departments save the equivalent of £16 million in carbon emissions reductions and £13 million in reducing water waste.

The commission has also worked with the NHS and schools to reduce their emissions and energy use and recommended the “whole-house” green makeovers to make them more energy efficient, a policy that was adopted by all three parties before the General Election.

Its advice on whether a Severn barrage could be built sustainably also paved the way for consideration of tidal schemes in the Severn Estuary.

Greenpeace campaigner Louise Edge condemned the decision to axe the SDC as “incredibly short-sighted”.

“The commission has always given great value for money, cutting wasteful energy use across Whitehall and providing vital advice on how departments can slash their carbon emissions.

“You have to wonder about the thinking behind scrapping a £3 million body with a record of success while pushing ahead with the multibillion-pound Trident replacement, which the military doesn’t even want. This is muddled thinking,” she said.

Margaret Ounsley, head of public affairs at WWF-UK, said: “Everybody knows that we are facing a heavy deficit, and we should not be too prescriptive about how the Government deals with it.

“However, it would be the worst sort of mindless hacking from Government if we were to lose the capacity to measure and report on its moves towards meeting its own commitments to become leaner and greener.

“Shooting the watchdog does not make always make for savings.”

And Friends of the Earth’s executive director Andy Atkins said: “The Sustainable Development Commission has played a crucial role in helping Government departments work together to tackle the triple threats of climate change, economic downturn and inequality – as well as keeping a critical check on progress.

“The coalition must be held to account on its promise to be the greenest Government ever – and explain how it will continue to green Britain, saving money and creating jobs at the same time – without the Sustainable Development Commission’s expert guidance and overview.”

Shadow energy and climate change secretary Ed Miliband said: “The coalition has made some terrible decisions on the environment – scrapping the loan to Sheffield Forgemasters, shelving Labour’s plan for the Green Investment Bank.

“They promised to be the greenest government ever but they’re completely betraying that promise.”

http://www.24dash.com/news/central_government/2010-07-21-Short-sighted-Government-to-axe-Sustainable-Development-Commission

As the former Chair of the Sustainable Development Commission from 2000-2009, I’m clearly going to be a bit biased about the Government’s decision yesterday to get rid of the Commission. So I’ve been working really hard to put myself in Ministers’ shoes in terms of the ‘rationale’ they’ve advanced for this reprehensible decision. They’ve put forward four justifications:1. It will save moneyThe SDC costs the taxpayer around £4 million a year, around 50% of which come from Defra. The rest comes from the Devolved Administrations and other Whitehall Departments – all of which wanted to carry on working with the SDC. As George Monbiot has pointed out, the SDC’s advice on reducing costs through increased efficiency has already saved the Government many, many times that negligible amount, and would have gone on doing so year after year.2. Sustainable development is now mainstreamed across government.Defra Ministers are now claiming that sustainable development has been embedded in every department. In other words, no specialist capability at the centre is any longer required, simply because the Government ‘gets it’.Like hell it does. To hear Caroline Spelman, Secretary of State in Defra make such a totally fatuous claim after a few weeks in power is irritating beyond belief. She clearly knows nothing of the constant slog required (of the SDC and many other organisations) to achieve the limited traction that is all that can be laid claim to today.There’s a rich irony here. The SDC is a UK-wide body. Neither Wales nor Scotland was in favour of getting rid of the Commission, no doubt because both Countries have done an infinitely better job than Whitehall on ‘mainstreaming’ sustainable development.3. It will avoid duplicationThis is a bit trickier, simply because the SDC does a number of different things. It advises Ministers – and there are indeed lots of other people who do that. But rarely if ever from an integrated sustainable development perspective. It helps countless public sector bodies (from the Audit Commission to the Department of Education, from Local Authorities to Primary Care Trusts in the NHS) to make sense of sustainable development, and no other government body does any of that. And it scrutinises government performance on a completely independent basis across the whole sustainable development agenda – not just on climate change. And no other body does that.4. Sustainable development is too important to delegate to an external bodyIt’s worth recording Caroline Spelman’s actual words here: “Together with Chris Huhne, I am determined to take the lead role in driving the sustainable agenda across the whole of government, and I’m not willing to delegate this responsibility to an external body.”Even after nine years working with dozens of Government Ministers, I’m astonished at such utterly brazen cynicism. The only thing Mrs Spelman has done so far as Secretary of State at Defra is publish a new strategy for the Department. This has not one serious reference to sustainable development in it. Such is the depth of her concern.If Defra’s next step is to get rid of what’s left of it’s own internal Sustainable Development Unit, then it will have literally no capacity to ‘drive the sustainable agenda’ even within Defra, let alone ‘across the whole of government’. And how can you drive anything if you haven’t the first clue what it actually means? And it just got rid of the only part of the system capable of providing you with a basic primer for beginners?So let’s not beat around the bush: their justification for getting rid of the SDC is transparently vacuous, if not downright dishonest. This is an ideological decision – in other words, a decision driven by dogma not by evidence-based, rational analysis.And the only conceivable reason for allowing dogma to dominate in this way is that the Government doesn’t want anyone independently auditing its performance on sustainable development – let alone properly-resourced, indisputably expert body operating as ‘a critical friend’ on an inside track within government.I don’t suppose the Prime Minister was even consulted about such a footling little matter. But it’s clear that his advisors hadn’t the first idea about the kind of signal this dogma-driven decision sends out, ensuring that his claim that this will be the ‘greenest government ever’ is in deepest jeopardy. It’s too early to make any definitive judgement about how the Green agenda will fare under the Coalition. But it’s not encouraging. ‘Greenest ever’ has to mean something substantive. Simply smearing a sickly ideological slime over everything just won’t cut it.